The first time I came to Tokyo was eight years ago and, like many tourists, I was a little disappointed. I imagined a city of skyscrapers and robots, a world of new technologies, in which in some unknown way the culture of antiquity was preserved.
It turned out that everything was not quite like that: I saw small, fussy people moving in tiny cars among two-story narrow houses, which seemed to be stuck together so that neighbors could shake hands without leaving the house. Then, much later, I saw skyscrapers, and robots, and the features of that very Japanese culture that drives everyone so crazy. I learned to communicate with the Japanese in their special language. It includes not only words, but also special sounds, gestures and bows, the correct execution of which is no less important than the spoken phrases. I learned to apologize a hundred thousand times and see beauty in glass and concrete.